Leading 100 Billion Neurons
journey into the brain and how this impacts business and leadership
A short eBook based on keynote at the annual symposium of The International Human Resource Community Switzerland, Zurich, May 2011
by Andy Habermacher
Copyright © 2011 by Andy Habermacher
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Andy Habermacher is a brain leader and a Certified Master Coach. He is CEO of corporate training programmes and also Managing Director of NeuroBusiness Group, Switzerland (see below). He is passionate about people and executive development…and brains.
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Introduction
Slide 3, the Nobel Prize for Physiology
Slide 7, the big parts of the brain
Slide 8, understanding the brain
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
Slide 1, unconscious processing
Slide 3, frightening faces (1)
Slide 4, frightening faces (2)
Slide 6, justification & rationalisation
Slide 1, fear in the brain (1)
Slide 3, fear in the brain (2)
Slide 5, what can stimulate fear
Introduction
This short eBook is an introduction to the topic of leading brains, neuroleadership. It is based on a keynote presentation that I gave to the international Human Resource Community in Zurich, Switzerland in 2011and takes us on a short journey into the brain, how it functions and what relevance this has on ourselves, our workforce and corporate applications.
Happy reading and I would love to have any feedback.
Andy Habermacher
Part 1: The Brain
The brain is a complex organ so the first part of this book needs to start by peering into the depths of our brain and understanding some of the simple biological structures and processes that are enabling us to function. This forms the base of almost all human behaviour so understanding these simple principles will already help to give you deeper insights into the human psyche.
Part 1: The Brain
Slide 1, technology
*
In recent years the amount of research done on the brain has mushroomed. This is for many reasons. Firstly the technological advances have been huge and this has meant that there are now numerous ways to peer into the brain and see what is happening from a cellular level to the coloured pictures and scans that we tend to see in most mainstream magazines. We can take pictures of incredible detail and we can see what parts of the brain are firing up to what stimuli. This technology is not only better it is also much, much more accessible and much cheaper. As the technology has become more varied more accessible and easier to finance these technologies have been used in a variety of fields and particularly in such interesting field as behavioural psychology. On top of all of this there is also a huge drive by the pharmaceutical industry to look into the brain to find a cure for some obvious diseases like Alzheimer’s but also for clues to such things as dieting and obesity. This has increased the amount of research and related funding to enable us to better understand the processes that are going on in the brain.
Some of this research is inaccessible such as looking at the micro chemical reactions within and between brain cells and some remains very academic and yet where there is great knowledge this is also being “translated” into simple formulations and being applied in different ways. Indeed this has reached the pop science culture with all willing to jump on the bandwagon of all things “neuro”. Not only authors and pop scientists but also food producers have jumped on this also with new neuro foods and drinks appearing by the day on the market. All supposedly designed to boost your power and energy through tapping into the knowledge of neuroscience. I remain sceptical, as you should, because sugar can also be described in terms of neuro power but sugar and water is hardly ground breaking technology carefully designed to increase energy in your brain and stimulate your mental faculties.
*Animated GIF source: Wikipedia Commons, Christian R. Linder, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Brain_chrischan_300.gif
Part 1: The Brain
Slide 2, the magical brain
So the brain is a big and complex thing and it consists of 100 billion neurons, brain cells that is, as the title of this book notes. Approximately speaking. To understand the size think of the brain in terms of M&Ms those coloured chocolate covered peanuts. If each brain cell were an M&M how big do you think it would be if it were a cube? 1km3, 10km3 or more? Well much more. It would be a cube of M&Ms 100km3. For those in the USA that is three long islands in New York next to each other and reaching up 100 km which is more than 12 times the size of Mt Everest and is indeed the border of space. For those in Europe it is almost 7 times the size of London again reaching 100 km to the border of space. And every part of that would be filled with chocolate covered peanuts, which represents a brain cell.
And that is not the only complexity because on top of this there are around another 100 billion glial cells, these are cells that support and provide nutrition to the neurons and provide a structural framework and then, of course, blood vessels and supporting structures. That’s a pretty complex piece of machinery. Then we have to bear in mind that each neuron has multiple connections. To make it simple we can multiply this by 1000 per neuron meaning that we have 100 trillion connections in the brain. Indeed a lot. Indeed so much that it starts to become slightly abstract concept. Indeed it has been calculated that the amount of possible connections we can generate in the brain is much more than all the atoms in the universe.
But when we are talking about the brain I think it is important to watch how it develops because this, for me, highlights the beauty and power of our brains.
From week 3 in the mother’s womb the embryo starts to take on some shape and here you can see a ridge that is the beginning of the spine. The spine indeed being a part of the brain. If you think about it the brain is directly connected to the spine and the spine is indeed a bundle of extra long brain cells stretching down and along the body transporting electrical signals to the rest of the body. Bizarre as it may initially sound this is all part of the brain, technically the central nervous system.
From week 4 you can see small blobs appearing at the top of the early spinal cord and as the embryo grows and grows these blobs also grow and develop into the different regions of the brain and from this the eyes are also produced. The eyes have their beginning in the brain and indeed are also directly a part of the brain with a bunch of nervous connections directly linking the back of the retina to the brain. At some stages of development there are as much as 6,000 neurons being produced each second.
The more fascinating part of he brain’s development is the neuron migration: these brain cells are produced along the central canal in the so-called neural tube (the brain at this stage represents a tube) and then, and this is fascinating, at some stage they all somehow decide to migrate and crawl along those glial cells I mentioned, which are the supporting and nutritional pathways in the brain, and find their own positions. This is a little creepy and no one yet knows how this is orchestrated. These cells, billions of them, just decide to start crawling to some seemingly predefined location and start to connect in different ways. They stretch out their axons, their “arms”, their connections, and find other cells to connect to and start to communicate by sending biological and chemical electrical signals. These cells then start communicating to each other. After the connections start humming and coordinating they are at this stage wring themselves for the functions we need. There then follows a stage of pruning and a great neuron death as the brain cuts out superfluous connections and neurons.
The process of reaching out and connecting continues for all our life the concept indeed of neuroplasticity, of the ability of the brain to rewire has shown us just how flexible the brain is. Your brain can rewire at any time in your life. This has powerful implications for change management.
These connections and different types of neurons (there are a number of types of neurons classed either on their chemical communication properties or their shape and size) are formed into different regions which have different functions assigned to them and as they communicate, they start to generate a hum of electricity as the biological pathways connect with each other and generate little zaps of electricity (known as action potentials) in the brain cells.
Part 1: The Brain
Slide 3, the Nobel Prize for Physiology
*
In 2001 the Nobel Prize for Physiology was given to a sea slug. Not any sea slug but the world famous Aplysia, the Californian sea slug that is.
Well no, not quite, it wasn’t. It was given to Erica Kandel for his work on the physiological storage of memory in neurons (he was awarded the prize together with Arvid Karlsson and Paul Greengard). Eric Kandel over half a century had followed neuroscience from its infancy to a wide field of scientific endeavour. His personal journey is no less fascinating and he experienced first hand the birth of modern neuroscience and in his brilliance, with the world’s greatest neruoscientific minds, helped to forge and form neuroscience, as we now know it. Some of his work all those years ago still carries significance today.
But what was that story of the sea slug?
* Picture source: wikipedia: Front side (obverse) of one of the Nobel Prize medals in Physiology or Medicine awarded in 1950 to researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Photograph: Jonathunder. Medal: Erik Lindberg (1873-1966).
The medal design itself is in the public domain in the United States, because it was published before 1923. It remains under copyright in its country of origin (Sweden) until 2037 (the first full year after 70 years following the death of sculptor/engraver Erik Lindberg (1873—1966)). The design is a registered trademark owned by the Nobel Foundation
Part 1: The Brain
Slide 4, the sea slug
*
So you may well ask what on earth does a sea slug have to do with neuroscience? And more importantly what does a slug’s brain have to do with a human’s brain? Well back to where I started: the human brain has 100 billion neurons. That is a lot. An awful lot. How on earth can you decide to pick out a neuron and decide how this influences the rest of the brain? Add to this that neurons are very small things. Particularly human neurons. Very small. And then how do you get a hold of one? Start cutting open humans heads? So when deciding to look more into people heads, Eric Kandel (who had entered into neuroscience because of his fascination with human behaviour - being strongly influence by Freud) decided to take a more unorthodox approach. Most researchers at the time in this field, which was truly in its infancy, were looking to research big animals: mice, dogs and cats. The logic, which seemed to make sense, was that to make sense of brains take a brain as big as you can for it to be relevant to humans.
Eric Kandel though, based on Cajal’s groundbreaking work at the end of the 19th century (Cajal was the first person to depict a neuron), noticed that the approach of taking big cells would make the research easier. This combined with other factors such as the fact that the Aplysia only has 20,000 brain cells. Nothing in terms of a brain. But, and this is very important, that meant it was immeasurably easier to identify the specific function of specific neurons and research this. And precisely these factors are what led to the advances in knowledge that led to Kandel being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001.
The more surprising take away is that brain cells are brain cells and some of the basic functions, at a cellular level are not so dissimilar in humans. The biggest difference is not the make up of individual cells but rather the complexity and the interactions of the human brain.
The organic make up and the simple processes of the organic electricity that flows along these brains cells are basically the same. And this is where it gets interesting because even at a cellular level we can start to see elements of human behaviour influencing us every day
* Picture source: Aplysia Californica, from http://www.biosbcc.net/ocean/fltre.htm Photo by Genny Anderson
Part 1: The Brain
Slide 5, the neuron
So what does happen in the brain cell and I suppose the real question is how does this help us understand human behaviour better? So let’s keep this simple. The brain cell as in the picture above has a body, an axon that long bit reaching out, dendrites the branches at the top and at the bottom the axon terminals, those bulbs at the end that connect to other brain cells (creating synapses). Without going into the complexities of brain cells the process is in essence simple. A stimulus will activate the brain cell, which through a chemical imbalance of charges creates an electrical spark that travels along the axon. This is known as an action potential. This action potential when it reaches a synapse will release a chemical, a neurotransmitter (or inhibitor), which will jump across the gap (the synapses do not actually touch other brain cells - there is a miniscule gap) dock into the dendrites of another brain cell and stimulate another action potential in another cell (or other cells).
So far so good, there is a lot happening at this micro level but the essence is simple. Much research is done at this level. For example the effect of caffeine in coffee can be explained at this level. Caffeine docks on to the adenosine receptors in the brain this means that adenosine cannot dock into these receptors. When adenosine binds it normally slows down the cell and causes drowsiness. With these blocked the adenosine cannot dock and hence caffeine can therefore delay sleepiness. This extra stimulation in the brain can also cause a cascade of other physical processes such as increased heartbeat and hormone release.
However when looking into leading brains at this level we will not go into the chemical processes in the brain though the concept of neuro enhancers has been much discussed in the press in recent years. The idea that we can have super executives by giving them various concoctions of drugs that can boost brain processes. This I, incidentally, believe is a fallacy: in many cases an apple can do a whole host of positive things in the brain and have better long-term effects.
For us some simple experiments run in the 60s show dramatically how our brain operates at a cellular but at a macro level. These highlight where some of the basic human fallacies lie – at a cellular level.
Part 1: The Brain
Slide 6, neuronal learning
The diagram above shows what Eric Kandel discovered in Ladislav Tauc’s laboratory in Paris during a set of experiments at the start of the 60s [1].
Simply they gave an electrical impulse to a brain cell and then noted the strength of the action potential, the electrical current generated by the cell. In the top diagram, you see a classic habituation pattern. If you give an electrical impulse the cell will produce an action potential. If you keep repeating this repetitive electrical impulse you will not see this action potential repeated as you might expect. The cell will start to habituate and the electrical output will become weaker, and weaker. This I find is dramatic. We can see with this simple experiment that brain cells at a cellular level are capable of learning, so to speak. Many of the processes that are happening in the brain are then influenced by this process. The same impulse will, over time, give a decreased output. In a banal situation, like the bathroom light in my second bathroom, this is just an amusing side effect. After moving in we decided to put another light in the second bathroom. Initially we noticed that the light hadn’t been fixed, but as such things go I didn’t fix it. And over time the importance decreases and I have now stopped noticing that the light is still not done. I have become habituated to it; my whole brain has become habituated to it. It does not react to the unfixed light. The same input has given my neurons a very low output. In more dramatic situations this explains how we stop noticing and even accept situations which in retrospect seem terrible and immoral even. In corporations it will explain the lethargy that may sneak up over time and it will show why a new broom sweeps clean. A new manager does not have habituated brain cells for the same situations his predecessor did. Bearing in mind that this is a natural cellular process, this raises the importance of this effect in corporations.
The second diagram shows the classic sensitisation pattern. A stimulus is given and an action potential is stimulated, this is repeated. So far so good. Now we give the brain cell a shock we give it hefty electrical impulse – it doesn’t like this and respectively gives a large output. We then give it the same impulse as at the start and low and behold something happens. The action potential it now generates is much larger than initially. The brain cell has been sensitized. So now we have the same input but a much larger output. What does this mean in terms of human behaviour? It means that now the same stimulus will give us an unusually large reaction. This could be in situations such as the words of an individual or an expression. The word “loss” could give an unusually large reaction in the boardroom (in fact research in neuroeconomics has shown higher activity in the brain when a situation has been reframed as a loss). The word “bank” could give an unusual reaction in most people in memory of the financial crises. The word “terrorist” after 9/11 caused the whole US nation to almost hyperventilate. Sensitization. And something used (manipulatively and ignorantly) by politicians and business people the world over.
The third diagram shows the classic conditioning case. The famous, or infamous, Pavlov’s dog, which we have all heard of. Here we have the case that a cell is given a stimulus and it generates an action potential. This is repeated and another action potential is generated. A shock is then given and almost simultaneously the original electrical impulse. This gives the same shock reaction. However, because the cell has now learned to link this to the original electrical impulse, when the original small electrical impulse is repeated the shock reaction is repeated and not the smaller original reaction. So the cell is now reacting to a different situation it has linked the small electrical impulse and is processing it as the shock impulse. That this is happening at a cellular level was a revelation to me. Remember we have 100 billion neurons and these are all at any given time being habituated, sensitized and conditioned.
This is dramatic. It explains a lot of basic human behaviour. Our ability to stop seeing things and accept things, situations, missing bathroom lights as normal. To get habituated to the sound of particular city. As I lived next to a railway line in my youth I soon didn’t hear the trains – this is habituation. However some people’s brains can react differently some people living next to railway lines may become over sensitive to it.
[1] Eric Kandel’s book “In Search of Memory” is a fascinating and very readable journey through his life and spans 50 formative years in neuroscience.
Part 1: The Brain
Slide 7, the big parts of the brain
So looking at the simple brain cell can start to show us some basic human reactions and behaviours in a broader sense. Now let’s look at the brain from a structural perspective. Research over the years has shown us some bigger splits in the brain and how these control what we are doing. I find these are very powerful way of looking at the brain and highlight how our brain functions at a very simplistic way but also gives some clarity as to how our mind prioritizes information.
The simplest way to think of the brain is not in the left right split but in the three-layer split. Daniel Siegel uses his hand to demonstrate this and it is a powerful visual tool to explain the brain:
The bottom layer is the old brain, the brain stem. This sits at the top of the spinal cord and indeed includes the top of the spinal cord which is a very real part of the brain. In this part of the brain, which is the oldest in an evolutionary sense, sit the basic primitive functions of survival and instinct. Body temperature regulation, heartbeat, basic movements, and instinctive responses and reflexes. Indeed this is why in the good old James Bond films he would crack someone at the top of the neck and he would collapse, dead. Indeed this is no myth. This is true.
Over this lies the next oldest piece of the brain the more recent addition and the more advanced the animal the more it will have of this region. This is the inner cortex or limbic system. Though the limbic system refers in most cases to a limited number of structures in this area I like to think of it as the inner cortex. This is deeply embedded in the brain and here sits our emotional centres, our hormonal production and memory amongst others. Here we process happiness, sadness, our hunger is driven from here, as is our sexual desire. Reward and fear and anxiety also.
Over this lies an area known as white matter this you may not know is a thick layer a few inches thick that consists only of axons. Those long strands at the bottom of our brains cells. These are the axons reaching out from the neurons in our outer cortex and connecting to the inner cortex.
Lying over the white matter a few millimetres thick is the outer cortex. The outer cortex being our crowning glory. The seat of “intelligence”. This is where our thinking brain lies and where we process our higher functions. It is this that differentiates us from other animals. We have a huge outer cortex; here we process many of our senses but also functions such as language and abstract thought and planning and motor movement and analysis. This is what, until about 20 years ago, we thought controlled the mind. This indeed must have been it was assumed. Recent research as shown this to be a fallacy. Our emotional centres and limbic system exert a much greater influence of your thinking than previously thought. Indeed we can see that our emotional centres control our mind. The limbic system gives the direction and quality of our thought. Not that the outer cortex is irrelevant, it is very relevant but that we are driven by emotions and desires and this also colours our rational thinking in many ways.
Within these large regions we have many distinct structures and many regions which have specific functionality. Some you may have heard of in popular literature. The Amygdale our emotional centres sitting deep in the brain. Our Hippocampus helps us consolidate memories, our prefrontal cortex is a major planning part of the brain and so the list goes on. The outer cortex is split (descriptively that is) into larger regions. The Prefrontal (frontal), the parietal (top), the temporal (side) and the occipital (back). And within these regions we have sub regions which are associated with different functions. These regions in the outer cortex are named after their location and something like the “ventromedial prefrontal cortex” sounds wonderful but simply means: the bit in the front of the brain (pre frontal) and in that region it is at the back of that region and a little to the side. Each of these regions has a function (often many functions together). We have, to name a scarce few, auditory, language, associations, abstraction, impulse control, short-term memory and the list goes on and on and on. The auditory cortex for example will be split into different regions which process rhythm, tone, and location amongst others. You get the idea I am sure.
The structures in the inner cortex are physically different. We can see the forms and the definitions of the outline and often this is also because the types of neurons are different. Remember I mentioned we have different types of neurons.
We will talk about some of the structures over the following pages – this is where neuroscience in business is creating a leading edge indeed. By understanding very specifically what is causing a behaviour or reaction this can lead us to find powerful solutions that lie at the very core of the problem.
Part 1: The Brain
Slide 8, understanding the brain
So to understand our mind and how we behave as human beings we also have to understand some of our hardwiring:
The brain is focused on survival. This is a programming that goes to the heart of our very existence. Our primary function is to survive and this is highlighted in the priority and the emphasis the mind gives to certain functions. Fear will take priority of anything else. Threat of death is something to be avoided at all costs. For survival we all need to eat and drink and to reproduce hence our fascination with sex and many of our dysfunctional eating habits. Eating in today’s society has a huge importance as it does in all societies. Survival is key, survival is priority and threat will take priority in the mind. We should be thankful for this otherwise we would unlikely be here today to talk about neuroscience. Yet this can also trip us up in modern society.
Emotions are an integral part of the brain. The brain functions together as one unit. Though we often, in research, focus on single units and parts of the brain, the brain is always integrated. Emotions are an integrated part of the brain. There is never such a thing as a purely rational way of thinking. Emotions are what connect us to the world and our environment and our society. Emotions are a crucial part of decision making also (see section on Rational Processing).
The brain likes rewards. The brain is also pre-programmed to like rewards. Which doesn’t take an awful lot of thought to work out. Yet these in themselves can lead to many distortions in thinking. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol because of the high it gives, drugs even, smoking also, eating disorders and a preference for eating sugary food because the short high and pleasure this gives the brain. Rewards are great but the mind often thinks in the short term and this will distort our ability to make good long-term decisions. Personally and in business.
The brain is a great simplifier. The brain is a wonderful mechanism and to use those 100 billion neurons efficiently it needs to make shortcuts, heuristics as they’re known technically. These shortcuts help us operate effectively in real time. Firstly from the context of our brain cells which will wire together literally to create highways of information and secondly much used pathways and associations to speed up decision-making processes. Right or wrong the brain makes an awful lot of shortcuts.
The brain is structured. The brain has many clear structures which are physically shaped. As previously mentioned the brain stem; various elements in the limbic system are clear physical shapes and regions that are clearly defined. These wire up in very similar ways in all of us. They must indeed for use to function as a human being. Then we have the outer cortex which is split into regions and areas. These are not always clearly defined as with some of the structures in the limbic system. But these regions are also very similar between people for example our language centres in the Broca Area and Wernicke's Area sit in the same places. These may be slightly differently mapped from person to person but they will basically be in the same place and have the same function (there are some unusual cases of hemisphere reversal). This means our brain does have a clear structure and that we can therefore make logical assumptions that are relevant for the vast majority of us.
The brain behaves in “rational” ways, which may seem externally irrational. The brain is a rational thing – but we would have to define rationality to justify that statement. How can a drug addict be rational, you may counter? Well yes, for us as human beings in a given society some behaviours may seem totally irrational indeed. I am merely talking about the brain itself as a closed system and not as a system interacting with the world. The brain says it needs drugs and ranks this above importance or long-term perspectives. This is simply from this brain’s perspective the most important thing to do. We have to understand that to solve the issue the brain needs to be reprogrammed. If the brain is weighting drugs as more important than social contexts, it will continue to want to take drugs and drive the behaviour of the person on the outside who, try as he might, will not be able to come off the drugs. These could be caused by dysfunctions, damage, upbringing and lack of development combined with genetic issues: as an example, reduced D2/D3 dopamine receptors in the Striatum (part of the brain’s reward centre) suggest a tendency for drug addiction [1].
The unconscious is more powerful than the conscious. I will talk about the unconscious in a few moments. But it is important to understand that the vast majority of information we process is unconscious and unconsciously filtered. We do not actively process the billions of bits of information coming at us every second. The mind makes short cuts and simplifies and all this is done without our conscious knowledge. It is good for us but we need to realise what is happening to understand the brain better and understand human behaviour.
Experiences drive our behaviour. Everything we do creates a pattern in the brain, indeed everything I process creates a pattern in the brain. Even something as cognitively simple as watching football match will involve a range of senses and emotions and that means a wealth of neural processes and stimulation and inhibition in millions and even billions of brain cells. We know what fires together wires together, a stimulus in a brain cell will increase the connection to another cell and could even stimulate new connections to grow. So that simply means our brain is the result of all our experiences and these will therefore drive our future behaviour. What Eric Kandel shows in his research into memory that led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize is that long-term memory is a physical process – the neurons will grow new synapses. So if you remember that football match from 2 years ago (long-term memory), it means that you have literally grown your brain. And we are not even going into implicit memory and unconscious influences that we are processing every second of every minute, of every hour, of every day.
[1]Dalley, J. W., Fryer, T. D., Brichard, L., Robinson, E. S. J., Theobald, D. E. H., Lääne, K., Peña, Y., et al. (2007). Nucleus accumbens D2/3 receptors predict trait impulsivity and cocaine reinforcement. Science, 315(5816), 1267-1270. AAAS.
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
This part of the book now looks past the brain as a structure and into some of the unconscious processes. These are after all what are driving a lot of your conscious processes and this is precisely why the unconscious is so vital to our understanding of the brain.
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
Slide 1, unconscious processing
In this section we will go into the brain from the perspective of the unconscious. In popular science we talk about the subconscious and this may have many mysterious or negative connotations but with a little thought we can see clearly that most things in the mind must be processed below the conscious level – for us to keep our sanity not least of all.
If we think of everything we need to do to keep alive we will quickly realise how much is happening below our conscious level. One simple example is our heartbeat which is obviously controlled below our conscious level. Another is the huge amount of minute adjustments and motor control we need to process to walk let alone walk up stairs. As we approach the stairs we are making calculations of distance and height and mange to keep our balance on one foot while lifting another to precisely the right height – there are millions of calculations going on below our conscious awareness. This we all know – but many will ask what about good old Freud’s unconscious? Well what we do know is that, as I mentioned previously, our mind simplifies many processes and there are many influences which happen below our level of consciousness. I will look a little later at justifications and how these are also unconscious. But famous psychologist, Richard Nisbett, showed in his 1977 paper “Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports of mental processes” [1] how unaware we are of our cognitive processes. The example Nisbett uses is this: think of your mother’s maiden name. Got it? Now tell me how you retrieved it. You will give me a blank look and simply say something like: “I remembered it because I remembered it”. Fine and true but this shows that the intricate workings of the mind, of how the mind activates and retrieves information is below our sense of explicit cognition.
I will outline a couple of examples from the many there are on the following pages.
[1] Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. (A. Devivo, A. Silver, D. Felder, R. Hayward, K. Patterson, A. Redman, A. Buchwald, et al., Eds.)Psychological Review, 84(3), 231-259. Psychology Pr. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
Slide 2, rational processing
The concept of rational processing is a little elusive. In prime because we first have to ask what is rational and we quickly learn that this can only be a standpoint and is anyhow always processed from the point of our brain. Many thing were considered unquestionably rational a few hundred years ago such as flat earth, earth the centre of the universe, etc. are now laughably naive.
I quote a percentage based on Martin Lindstrom's work in his book “Buyology” which goes into consumer decisions but gives us at least, a figure to grasp on to. In buying decisions Martin Lindstrom quotes 85% as the figure. Not for rationality but of irrationality. Better said emotional. That feels about right to me 85% of our decisions are based primarily on emotionality and 15% on rationality. As previously explained the brain works in unison and to separate emotion from ration is difficult. Indeed it is impossible. Antonio Damasio describes in his now famous book “Descartes Error” the (much quoted) case of Elliot, a patient of his, whose ability to make decisions in business had been completely disrupted by lesion in his orbitofrontal cortex which balances emotional input in decision making. This lack of connection to his emotional centres caused his business acumen to go haywire and this previously successful businessman lost the ability to make good decisions losing his job, wife and money in the process. Furthermore a relatively obscure paper [1] published in Indonesia showed a link between mathematical reasoning and emotional intelligence and that this was positively and inversely correlated i.e. that improving emotional intelligence could also improve mathematical reasoning ability.
As I have mentioned previously the brain works as a whole in a human context even mathematics at some stage has a human context but more importantly the brain must be communicating together to perform well. Think of it like a 100m sprinter in athletics. Though a 100m sprinter will generally have large muscles the speed is not driven through large muscles only and not only his large legs. The weight of his body must be driven forward by the speed of contact to the ground and the transfer of energy to propel the body forward requires a strong platform in the body to push it forward – so this requires stiff tendons in ankle and knees but a stable upper torso and stabilising internal muscles to be able to keep the body taught and allow it to be projected like a projectile. There are numerous factors at play just building big leg muscles will only have a limited impact on a sprinters ability to run fast: this is the same as the brain. Different parts will balance and complement certain decision-making abilities with emotion and with intuition.
[1] Rusgianto, H.S. The Relationship Between Reasoning, And Emotional Intelligence In Social Interaction With Mathematics Achievement. Yogyakarta State University.
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
Slide 3, frightening faces (1)
We
as human beings are social creatures. Our evolution has depended on
our tribe and on cooperation and in collaboration. Indeed this is
one distinguishing feature of human beings (though not exclusively,
creatures such as ants and bees show huge amounts of collaboration).
We have families and friends and indeed our tribe was our sense of
security. This social function in the human brain is hardwired.
Children are born with an ingrown sensitivity to faces
[1] and appear right
from birth – meaning before they have even been sensitized to
different emotions and facial expressions – to be able to
distinguish fearful and neutral faces or at least learn this very
quickly [2] [3]
This socialisation has probably been a key ingredient to the success of the human race. Yet this can cause some problems in the modern day world. Brain scans have shown some interesting aspects of this. Looking into the brain with fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) we will see various parts of the brain light up.
Candidates during these studies, while lying in these scanners, were presented with various pictures of faces. When presented with frightened faces, the amygdala immediately lit up [4]. The amygdalae are key emotional processing units. But they are very active in processing fear, threat and anxiety. These emotions, incidentally, tend to take priority in the brain as they are survival functions. This makes sense in an evolutionary context. If I see someone who is afraid, there is likely a good reason and it would be good for me to be afraid as well. So far so good. Maybe not so surprising after all. Nevertheless this highlights how we operate in groups and are influenced by those around us. The more interesting aspect is that of unconscious fear.
[1] Easterbrook, M. A., Kisilevsky, B. S., Muir, D. W., & Laplante, D. P. (1999). Newborns discriminate schematic faces from scrambled faces. Canadian journal of experimental psychology Revue canadienne de psychologie experimentale, 53(3), 231-241.
[2] Hoehl, S., Palumbo, L., Heinisch, C., & Striano, T. (2008). Infants’ attention is biased by emotional expressions and eye gaze direction. NeuroReport, 19(5), 579-582.
[3] Farroni, T., Menon, E., Rigato, S., & Johnson, M. H. (2007). The perception of facial expressions in newborns. The European journal of developmental psychology, 4(1), 2-13. Taylor & Francis.
[4] Whalen, P. J., Shin, L. M., McInerney, S. C., Fischer, H., Wright, C. I., & Rauch, S. L. (2001). A functional MRI study of human amygdala responses to facial expressions of fear versus anger. Emotion Washington Dc, 1(1), 70-83. US: American Psychological Association.
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
Slide 4, frightening faces (2)
So now we come to the more interesting findings in the research. Unconscious fear. And this is activated through a technique known as masking. Simply subliminal activation. So in the previous example the study participants were in a scanner and looked at pictures of faces and the scanner picked up images of the brain activated in different ways. So far so good. Now we know that we consciously pick up a visual stimulus if we are exposed to it for more than 30 milliseconds. Below this and we do not consciously pick it up but it registers in the mind. Below 10 milliseconds and nothing registers. So if people see a fearful face we know they can consciously interpret it and feel fearful themselves. What now happens if this stimulus is below the visual conscious level? The technique of masking then shows images of, say, neutral faces for a few seconds and then as they change over a picture of a fearful face will be projected for normally 25 milliseconds. Will the brain now pick this up and also register fear? The answer is a clear yes [1].
This shows how the brain is hardwired to pick up and register fear. This means also that we may be picking up fearful signals without the foggiest that they are there. This is worrying for companies because if fear starts seeping through an organisation, this will cause all sorts of problems from mistrust to distorted decisions.
More than that an experiment [2] with cortically blind people shows just how deeply embedded this fear reaction is. Cortically blind people then went through the very same experiment of looking at various faces. These were blind people – cortical blindness is due to disfunctioning in the brain, the visual cortex at the back of the brain is failing to correctly process the information. The eyes are technically functional. And here fear was also registered in the brain when being shown fearful faces. This sounds surprising, and it is. Yet what it shows is that if a signal of a fearful face enters the brain the automatic fear detection centres pick it up even if the visual cortex is not functioning. This shows above anything else that we have an inbuilt fear and face sensitivity and our fear centres will activate according to the environment, our social environment.
An additional finding of this research [2] is that in the case of a patient who was cortically blind in only one eye, the fearful image that was presented in the blind field of vision activated the amygdala more. This suggests that unconscious stimulated fear is actually more powerful than conscious fear. A worrying take away for corporations and for all of us.
[1] Whalen, P. J., Rauch, S. L., Etcoff, N. L., McInerney, S. C., Lee, M. B., & Jenike, M. A. (1998). Masked presentations of emotional facial expressions modulate amygdala activity
[2] Morris, J. S., DeGelder, B., Weiskrantz, L., & Dolan, R. J. (2001). Differential extrageniculostriate and amygdala responses to presentation of emotional faces in a cortically blind field. Brain: A journal of neurology, 124(Pt 6), 1241-1252. Oxford Univ Press.
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
Slide 5, mirror neurons
Mirror neurons can go some way to explaining our reaction to fear but more than anything mirror neurons demonstrate how we are connected to the world and, more importantly, to each other. Indeed many have named them the neurons that formed civilisation.
Mirror neurons in the brain were first discovered in a neuroscience lab in Parma, Italy, around Giacomo Rizzolatti’s team of researchers. They had managed to wire up a single neuron in a macaque monkey and one day a researcher was in the lab and he ate nut. When he raised his hand to eat the nut (or snack or ice cream according to various accounts) he noticed that the monkey’s brain cell had activated. The neuron that they had wired up was a motor neuron (dealing with movement). These are the largest neurons and so the easiest to connect (though that in itself is a challenge as neurons are pretty small things).
The initial reaction was to think that this was a mistake with the computer – the monkey after all was not moving. Further checking showed it was not the computer and after doing it a few times they believed they had stumbled on something new. An arm movement neuron that activates when it sees someone else’s arm move. The paper written [1] after this was rejected initially for its general lack of interest, the journal’s editors failing to see the wide implications of this. But it was a little later almost euphorically received by the scientific and broader community and there was a huge flux of research into mirror neurons. Many high profile researchers have dealt with this including V. S. Ramachandran and Iacoboni. The implications of mirror neurons are huge. We are connected with the people around us - with our mirror neurons that will be mirroring other’s actions in our brains. In fact when we are having a mighty good conversation with a friend our brains shift into synchrony [2] - firing in similar patterns. Being on the same wavelength is not imagined, it is real. It is biological.
What later research showed is that we can also mirror intentions [3] and it has been implicated strongly in how we process empathy [4]. What is sure is that we pick up how people are feeling and our minds can start to mirror it. Note that a mirror neuron will activate at a sub-threshold level. So when I watch a person move his arm I will not actually move my arm (however moving my arm may become easier).
More than that mirror neurons have also been classed by some as the neurons that formed civilisation [5]. Because of this mirroring effect they are strongly associated with learning [6] and empathy - strong traits in human beings and so seem key from an evolutionary standpoint [7].
This explains why if you watch a particularly bad speaker you may start to feel embarrassed for the person speaking. That feeling is a result of your mirror neurons hard at work. The same goes for confident speakers – they make us feel good. Their confidence is passed over to us. Again our mirror neurons hard at work.
This will also explain how a room can have an atmosphere. This is because the people around you will start to influence you as well – that is why you can feel the atmosphere. If a whole room is sitting there excited, your mirror neurons will likely fire away powerfully and quickly. So feelings are infectious and in any situation a group of people may be feeding their own emotions to others. This also illustrates, with brutal scientific reality, the relevance and absolute necessity of managers “walking the talk”. If managers don’t do it they will not activate the mirror neurons of their subordinates who will then unlikely also do it. This indeed is likely to be an unconscious process, as I keep emphasising.
[1] Rizzolatti, G., Fadiga, L., Gallese, V., & Fogassi, L. (1996). Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Brain Research, 3(2), 131-141.
[2] Dumas, G., Nadel, J., Soussignan, R., Martinerie, J., & Garnero, L. (2010). Inter-Brain Synchronization during Social Interaction. (J. Lauwereyns, Ed.)PLoS ONE, 5(8), e12166.
[3] Iacoboni, M., Molnar-Szakacs, I., Gallese, V., Buccino, G., Mazziotta, J. C., & Rizzolatti, G. (2005). Grasping the intentions of others with one’s own mirror neuron system. PLoS Biology, 3(3), e79.
[4] Rizzolatti, G. (2008). Mirrors in the brain. How our Minds share Actions and Emotions. Oxford University Press.
[5] Ramachandran, V. S. (2000). Mirror neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind «the great leap forward» in human evolution. New York.
[6] Del Giudice, M., Manera, V., & Keysers, C. (2009). Programmed to learn? The ontogeny of mirror neurons. Developmental Science, 12(2), 350-363. Wiley-Blackwell.
[7] Oberman, L. M., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2009). Reflections on the Mirror Neuron System: Their Evolutionary Functions Beyond Motor Representation. (J. A. Pineda, Ed.)Mirror Neuron Systems. Humana Press. doi:10.1007/978-1-59745-479-7
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
Slide 6, justification & rationalisation
So we’ve just seen that there are various inputs that are being processed below our conscious level and now it becomes even more interesting. What happens when we try to explain this, when our conscious mind tries to explain our actions and reactions to unconscious stimuli? For this we can go back to a famous experiment carried out 80 years ago now that demonstrated how we start to post-rationalise much of the information going on around us.
Way back in 1931 the psychologist Norman R. F. Maier conducted an experiment [1] on rationalisation and justification.
The experiment was run in a room with ropes hanging from the ceiling – the task was to find methods to tie the ends of the two ropes together. The ropes were so far apart that it wasn’t possible to just hold one end and walk to another end so the subjects being tested had to find solutions to this tricky task. People were asked to find ways to connect the two ropes together. One potential solution, for example, was to tie a rope to a chair in the room and this enabled positioning the rope close enough to the second rope to then walk over to the other rope and tie it to the rope on the chair. One solution that eluded almost all participants was the strategy of swinging a rope so that it could then be caught close enough to the other rope.
The participants stood in the room stumped for an answer – Norman Meier then walked across the room and “accidently“ brushed against a rope setting it swinging (an intentional hint but so subtle that it wasn’t clear that it was a hint). This stimulated most people to find the final solution – when asked how they had come to his solution, however, only one person (from 61) gave the real reason. Everyone else came up with an amazing amount of reasons for why they had found the solution (“It came to me in a flash of inspiration”; “The picture of a child on a swing burst into my mind.” etc.) – because the hint was at an unconscious level the mind found a way of justifying it and came up for a reason – it was, in 60 from 61 cases, the wrong reason. This is not saying that the thoughts did not come into the minds but rather that the stimulus was unconscious and so the justification was at a different level.
There have been many more similar experiments (one experiment was held with biology students finding a solution to a problem [2]) showing how unconscious stimuli can influence us and how we are totally unaware of it but are very capable of coming up with a host of fantastic and very plausible reasons for why we came to what is now in our mind [3].
You can think of it like backward engineering. You see the solution and then calculate backwards to what you think is reasonable explanation for this – most of the time it will have nothing to do with the actual reason.
[1] Maier, N. R. F. (1931). Reasoning in humans. II. The solution of a problem and its appearance in consciousness. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 12(2), 181-194. Elsevier. doi:10.1037/h0071361
[2] Schunn, C. D., & Dunbar, K. (1996). Priming, analogy, and awareness in complex reasoning. Memory cognition, 24(3), 271-284.
[3] Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. (A. Devivo, A. Silver, D. Felder, R. Hayward, K. Patterson, A. Redman, A. Buchwald, et al., Eds.)Psychological Review, 84(3), 231-259. Psychology Pr. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231
Part 2: Unconscious Processing
Slide 7, confirming evidence
In 1998 a ground-breaking article appeared in The Harvard Business Review with the title: The Hidden Traps in Decision Making [1]. John Hammond with Ralph Keeney and Howard Raiffa had looked into the underlying psychological impact our mind has on our decision-making (and applied this to business for one of the first times). The article listed eight traps that business leaders (and we in general) fall into. One of them was called the Confirming Evidence Trap. It is common. Very common. In fact it is everywhere all the time.
Confirming evidence (psychologists talk about confirmation bias) is when you find the arguments to support your own arguments and standpoints and arguments and evidence that go against your opinion are ignored or moderated. In one psychological study [2] of this phenomenon, two groups - one opposed to and one supporting capital punishment - each read two reports of carefully conducted research on the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. One report concluded that the death penalty was effective; the other concluded it was not. Despite being exposed to solid scientific information supporting counter arguments, the members of both groups became even more convinced of the validity of their own position after reading both reports. They automatically accepted the supporting information and dismissed the conflicting information.
If, as a business leader, you feel that cutting jobs is the answer to your problems as a company, you will find all the evidence you want that supports your argument and ignore all the evidence to the contrary. Keep your eyes open for this one - the world is full of it.
This is also a common trap of scientists trying to find the answers to their favourite theories. In everyday life we hear it daily from politicians. Politicians will always find evidence for their theories – indeed when we talk about big issues there is always evidence one way or the other and often we pick out one example (it may be the only example) and use this constantly. How many smokers do you know that refer to an uncle of theirs who smoked 100 cigarettes a day and was fighting fit and lived till he was 220.
Needless to say this is a common trap of politicians. Indeed Drew Westen’s book “The Political brain” looks into the brain and politics and finds these immense distortions.
[1] Hammond, J. S., Keeney, R. L., & Raiffa, H. (2006). The hidden traps in decision making. Harvard Business Review, 84(1), 118.
[2] Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(11), 2098-2109. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.37.11.2098.
Part 3: Brains in Business
The previous section highlights some of the unconscious processes in the mind. But now we need to think about these in more specific business contexts and what this means for businesses and in organisations. Indeed what does it mean for your organisation?
Part 3: Brains in Business
Slide 1, fear in the brain (1)
I’ve previously mentioned fear and how it can activate unconsciously. I also noted that fear is one of our prime emotions – it is the survival instinct. So when looking into business we need to look long and hard at fear. Business creates many situations that can generate fear in and across an organisation from the highest echelons to the lowliest of workers. Fear can ride across economies and drive them into deep recessions. Fear is easy to underestimate and simply to dismiss. Don’t. It is something anyone in business needs to take very, very seriously. Fear in organisations and in leaders will distort thinking patterns, creating a cascade of decisions and bad actions and freeze people and ideas. Fear will seep in unnoticed, many may not be aware it is there, but seep through the organisation it will. Indeed.
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